Attributed to Angelo Caroselli

Anonymous sale, Milan, Sotheby's, 18 October 2006, lot 259 (as Caroselli);
With Rob Smeets, Milan;
From whom acquired. 

London, Whitfield Fine Art, Caravaggio's Friends and Foes, 27 May - 23 July 2010 (as Caroselli).

E. Clark and C. Whitfield, Caravaggio's Friends and Foes, exhibition catalogue, London 2010, pp. 98-100, reproduced p. 99 (as Caroselli);
D. Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 1585-1652: un pittore irriverente, Rome 2011, p. 177 (as Caroselli, dating to the 1620s). 

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work is painted on a heavy piece of slate. The stone is unbroken. The paint layer seems to have remained stable. Under ultraviolet light, small spots of retouching can be seen throughout in no particular concentration. These retouches seem to adjust small flyspecks that have accumulated over the years. The work should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Angelo Caroselli was a self-taught artist who started his career as a restorer and copyist. Indeed such was his skill that Poussin is reported by Bellori to have been unable to tell the difference between Caroselli's copy of a Raphael Madonna and the original. Caroselli's main source of inspiration was undoubtedly Caravaggio and the new possibilities his revolutionary idiom allowed, both in terms of form, through the powerful naturalism his paintings and chiaroscuro achieved, and content, by depicting the picturesque subjects and bohemian characters who must have lined many of the streets of contemporary Rome. Witchcraft, musicians and an association with the occult recur throughout his striking and fantastical oeuvre. In recent years a corpus of homogeneous paintings whose style comes very close to that of Caroselli has emerged. Little is known about the so-called Pseudo-Caroselli, an artist who must have had direct access to Caroselli, for their styles are often indistinguishable, save for a slightly harder edge to the Pseudo-Caroselli's forms, as well as an increased interest in the build-up of texture through an accentuated use of impasto. Perhaps the possibility that the present work should be given to the Pseudo-Caroselli should not be excluded, but the qualitative difference between the two artists is barely distinguishable. Moreover, our picture was published in Daniela Semprebene's monograph dedicated to Caroselli as a fully autograph work.

The painting's pendant, of very similar dimensions and also on slate, is in a private collection and was sold London, Phillips, 2 December 1997, lot 48, as by Caroselli.